


we will become silhouettes

by kryptic_pear



Category: Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptic_pear/pseuds/kryptic_pear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You gave me my first weapon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we will become silhouettes

By the time she pulls him from the Pit Talia knows more of the world than Bane ever had. It is nothing like he had made it out to be in his memories and everything like the Pit. When he emerges from the haze of pain, when her father tells him he is nothing more than a broken tool, a wasted possibility, after all that she finds him and embraces him and he feels her whipcord teenage body pressed against him. She is shaking, her little hand pressing a gun against his back. He waits, still unsure of how to talk with this mask, unsure of how to breathe without the constant threat of pain.

She pulls away and presses the gun into his hand, "Keep this with you, my friend. I will convince my father to keep you, he is-" she pauses and he realizes very suddenly that she is shaking with rage, "Mistaken. But you must trust no one. Not even me."

Bane is silent, he nods, feels the weight of the gun in his hand, remembers the feel of kickback. She presses her fingers to his mask and closes her eyes, stilling herself. Bane just watches her, she smiles, "Stay safe, friend. When you see me next I will not be the girl you saved, but the heir of Shadows. Remember that."

It is three days of waiting, pacing his hospital room, trying out his voice on the blank walls. There are no mirrors, mirrors can be shattered, used like knives. They cut even when all they do is reflect. Bane waits. The gun is plain except for the engraving in its handle, _The darkness made me._

When the door opens, it is Ra's al Ghul. His suit crisp, smelling of smoke and the rain that Bane knows is pouring down outside. Behind him, a sliver of a shadow in a suit as well, her dark hair pulled tight and shining against her head. Another two men enter the room, but Bane pays them no attention, they are enforcers.

"Will you pledge yourself to the League of Shadows? Will you be the fang that protects the head? Do you swear to live until I command it otherwise?"

Bane tucks his thumbs into the vest he's been given to wear, touches the butt of the gun he has hidden there. He looks at Talia, but her face is in shadow. Bane nods.

Ra's al Ghul nods, pulls a photograph from his suit and holds it out. Bane takes the photograph, on the back is a name. "Kill this man. When it is done, we will find you. Should you fail, we will kill you. Should you die, we will bring you back. Keep to the shadows, brother." They leave Bane to his thoughts, he listens the click of Talia's heels on the linoleum until they can no longer be heard. 

Bane does not like the city. Gotham is dirty, dirtier than the Pit even. Which seems contradictory to logic when one considers that the Pit is where Gotham throws its trash. Rain doesn't clean the streets, it is simply an oppressive reminder of the filth. The city looks the same as it did when he was a child. The gangs run the streets sure, but on a more real level, the drug pushers are the masters on the individual level. Territory staked out in blocks, not neighborhoods. The gangs, they're as bloated as the police, it is the bottom filled with addicts and pushers and children with hollow eyes that is the reality of the city.

People don't stare at his mask, they don't notice him at all. They are too caught up in their own rat race to spare a thought for another unfortunate. Their sympathies are spread to thin to share. Bane finds an old friend, barely remembered, from his past. They had been initiated together into his father's gang. The King Snakes were probably long gone, along with Bane's father. But Edgar Arellano had survived their fall. Though just barely. His skeletal appearance does not take Bane aback, nor the gun he pulls on Bane.

"You would shoot an old friend? A fellow snake?"

Edgar's nostrils flare, he blinks back rain from his eyes. "How? They t'rew you in the Pit. You took the fall-"

"I need your assistance, do you know this man?"

He finds his affected accent comes across more clearly through the mask than his old one. The slang sits on the back of his tongue, he uses instead the voice of a dead man. The man who taught him poetry in the Pit. The Professor.

Edgar blows out a puff of air, shrugs and tucks his gun into his waistband, it hangs precariously there caught between hip bone and a belt that couldn't cinch tight enough to pull to a waist so thin. "He's always down at that club, Rio, that fronts for the Spades."

Bane tucks the photograph away and turns to go. "He's dead you know. He- he regretted it."

"No, he didn't."

It isn't a question.

Bane spends two nights outside the Rio. They wouldn't let him in. Promoters lead in packs of scantily dressed girls with their pupils blown wide, but no men. There's no line outside and the bouncers pack heat. The thrumming music hides whatever goes on inside.

He thinks that he spots a shadow on the rooftop, but it is hard to tell in the rain. At least the cold doesn't touch him. He burns up, always too hot. It's a reaction to the drugs. A testament to the adrenaline they bring his body. Better than the pain.

On the third night he pulls out his gun and crosses the street. He shoots the two bouncers from halfway across, sure the sound won't carry inside the club. Bane tucks the gun away, pulls his hood down further to shadow his eyes and steps into the club. Inside, the flashing lights and close atmosphere momentarily makes his gut clench with its alien nature. But even with lights like these there are shadows aplenty.

Girls arrange careful lines of luminous powders on glass tables, sip brilliant cocktails, and stare at the lights with their too big eyes. The men are barely noticeable, half-men with leering smiles and hands that bely their real ages. Bane stalks around the edge, slips through into the hallway next to the bar. There are bathrooms, a few doors, but Bane ignores them for the stairs. Old criminals prefer to keep the high ground, they don't have the reckless belief in their own immortality that young men have.

Sure enough, the stairs lead to another room with a table and a smattering of self-important men. Bane pushes back his hood, once he would've smiled. Smiles were how his father had once intimidated. It was a smile that signaled a beating, another lesson in the rules of the darkness.

"Good evening gentleman." It is the Professor who speaks for him. He lets the dead man fashion his words into something powerful, as powerful as money.

He doesn't give time for response, shoving an unsteady woman in heels into the closest man, he slams another man's head into the table, guns are drawn now. They fire, one two, behind him. He keeps moving, finds the man he wants and cradles his chin, pulling him out of the chair. The gunfire ceases.

"Let us all be very reasonable. I have no quarrel with you. You are merely a symptom of the greater evil that rules this city. We all are. All I want is this man. No need for pointless bloodshed."

Their guns stay trained on him and he drags the struggling man towards the door. "Except of course, for his."

The hand that cradled the man's chin now snaps it to the side, neatly snapping his neck. Bane disappears down the stairs. He hears the shouts behind him, drowned quickly in the music. Now he shoves his way through the crowd, most too high, too far gone to complain, their blank stares follow him.

Not even the gunshots that go wide above his head, into the crowd, can break the barrier of sound the music creates. Out the front door, he closes it behind him. Grabs the block that propped it open and uses it to wedge the handles so the door can't be pushed open.

"Well done."

He doesn't need to turn, he knows her voice. Has replayed it a thousand times in his mind.

"What next?"

When he does turn, her lipstick is so bright, at first he thinks it is blood. She is so small. Her breast are barely noticeable through the tightly tailored suit. Though hormones have barely laid their first touches upon her and it is clear she will come into curves. He wonders if she has ever been kissed. Who will teach her how to use her body against men and women like the weapon that it is? He wants to reach out and touch her hair, slicked back, shining in the rain. It is short, barely making a ponytail at her neck. Who will teach her that love is another way for people to hurt you? But sex is how to take the power back from them?

She pulls out another photograph. She does not call him her friend. She does not touch him. She does not shake with anger. But her eyes linger on his face before she turns on her heels and leaves.

So it goes. Bane kills for the League. He doesn't share his fellow members dedication to Ra. But Talia's infrequent visits are enough to keep him going, to keep him from falling back into darkness.

The League of Shadows creates chaos in the streets. They disrupt supply lines and pit neighbor against neighbor. They don't see that in Gotham, there is nothing left to save. If the Pit is Hell, it is simply the deepest reach and Gotham it's outer rings. Sloth, greed, lust, gluttony, envy, pride, and wrath rule the streets. But Ra's Al Ghul believes in his cause. Bane can see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, there is true belief there. Bane believes in only one thing, darkness.

The police face the League's wrath as often as criminals. The distinction really only relates to where they go to work during the day, because the night makes them all the same. Slavering, hungry fools. Grasping for their own bit of the grime. They disgust him.

As time passes, Bane is not so careful. More men die than simply his targets. Fires are started. Those who cross his path find themselves victims of unfortunate circumstances. Bane delights in their panic. For men, when faced with darkness, find themselves darker creatures than expected. Bane starts to turn off the lights.

Ra's does not appreciate such things. Ra's Al Ghul may speak of shadow, but shadow is not darkness. Bane was born to this city, born with the grime running through his blood, he was born in the dark. Like Talia.

Both were given to the Pit for the sins of the father.

Bane ignores Ra's corrections. You cannot torture a man who has faced the Pit. Of course, on a practical note, you cannot torture a man who has faced constant pain like Bane has. Not even if you take away his painkillers to do it.

What Bane pays attention to is the small black figure in his window. Bane moves around, but it doesn't surprise him that Talia can find him. She stalks around his room, here eyes flashing in the dark, but says nothing. 

"If I was in true danger, I would defend myself," he says, to calm her pacing. She whirls and stares at him, her face is twisted in a rage she never knew in the Pit.

She had once been innocent, he thinks. It must have been her father who took that from her. Her father had finally done what the Pit could not.

"He has no right," she hisses to the dark. Bane rises from the edge of the bed and cradles her shoulders in his hands. 

"This is how the world works, Little Bird."

Her eyes close, when they open, they show no emotion, her face a blank slate again. "If I cannot protect you, than all my efforts are in vain."

One might laugh, a little girl like her, not even a full woman yet, protect a man like Bane? An unholy terror, a devil from the deep, crafted in darkness and hatred, for a revenge that could never be fulfilled?

He wishes to kiss her forehead like a father, a friend, a husband. But all he can do is breath through his mask, suck in another gust of elevating opiates and suppressants.

"Keep my gun with you," she says, finally, pulls away and leaves through the window. His pajarita off to hunt.

Bane does not stop his activities, he couldn't. They are a part of him. They scream loud enough above the rabble to attract the attention of Harvey Dent. A man looking to prove himself. A man with a code. Bane likes that.

Who is the man with the mask?

It is the calling card of two men in this city, one, Bane ignores, the other, himself. The day he crashes the stock market without even an order to excuse himself with, Harvey Dent receives an envelope on his desk.

A dog off his leash, must sometimes be put down.

Bane is awake when the swat team enters the building. He goes out the window and down the fire escape. They have not surrounded the building with cop cars and spotlights, to show fear like that in Gotham would start a panic. But a sniper knicks the brick next to his head. After that, no shots are fired.

He drops to the top of a dumpster from two stories, rolls to the ground. His fist meets the first man with enough force to break his teeth. Bane doesn't feel the cuts in his hand, crushes the next man's windpipe. A woman with knives that flash in the moonlight catches his shoulder with one of her little blades. He takes her in a charge that she does not expect, cracking her head against the ground. He cannot risk a knife thrower rising again while he's around. He draws the knife from his shoulder and stabs the next man in the chest. A patrolling officer rounds the corner and shouts. But his shout is cut off by a garotte. A nimble shadow rides him to the ground and leaps off.

Bane turns his attention back to Ra's insurance. Ra's al Ghul would not underestimate Bane, would never trust Dent to do his job. But to flush the quarry Dent made a good little hound. Bane grabs a man's face and shoves him into the woman behind him, crushing the bones beneath his fingers. A gurgling behind him is the only sign that Talia has taken his side.

She is a shadow. A predator of the night. A nightmare in an unformed body.

He is the dark. Overpowering, extinguishing all light. A devil with the body of a golem.

When they can leave, they move to the street, there are more police now than assassins. Talia throwing him the keys to a bike, they flash in the dark. She lays her head against his back as they roar into the night. Sirens follow. But cannot catch. Gothem is their city. An extension of their hell. And they are the devils who know it best.

Bane pauses the bike in an alley. Feels her behind him, chest heaving with exertion, pressed against him like the child that truly she is.

"Will you kill me?"

I would let you. I know what it is like, to take orders from the blood of your blood, the heart of your heart.

She pulls a gun from her boot, Bane closes his eyes. It would be a mercy, for her to take the task upon herself. To let it be the hands of a friend. But she merely holds the gun for him to see. When he opens his eyes, the handle is presented to him.

Even in the dark of night, he can catch the engraving.

_The darkness saved me._

"You gave me my very first gun," she says, "My freedom."


End file.
